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    Start Up Disk Is Almost Full?? Please Help

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by AntuanShagur, Dec 31, 2008.

  1. AntuanShagur

    AntuanShagur Newbie

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    Hi guys, I have recently been getting this warning messages on my mac about my start up disk being almost full, yet i still have 170gb free in my HD out of 230, another problem is that since i started dl torrent with utorrent my HD space went down from 170gb to 122gb yet the last thing i dl was about 20mb..
    Im really worried, :confused:
     
    AntuanShagur, Dec 31, 2008
    #1
  2. TabbedOut

    TabbedOut Notebook Evangelist

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    Torrent could suck up the space pretty fast. On the PC utorrent will create full sized temp files on the HDD... and it seems especially bad if you stop a dowload half way through. What you wind up with what are essentially place holders on your disk that take up space. I would search and make sure this isn't the case on your mac.
     
    TabbedOut, Dec 31, 2008
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  3. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    the best way to see what is taking up space is the list view in finder, the second view mode.

    in this one, if you right/control click on the category tabs, "name", kind, etc. you can add a size view option in the Show View Options menu, you can also enable Calculate All Sizes. this will enable the option to calculate sizes of all folders and files, therefore making it very easy to see what is taking up space across the entire HDD,

    I don't recommend removing anything from the Library or Systems folders, as that is where the OS lives, but definitely take a look at your own user folder to see what is going on.

    you may also just need to open up Disk Utility and do a Disk and Permissions repair.
     
    circa86, Jan 1, 2009
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  4. ValkyrieLenneth

    ValkyrieLenneth Notebook Evangelist

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    Did you empty your trash ?
     
    ValkyrieLenneth, Jan 1, 2009
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  5. AntuanShagur

    AntuanShagur Newbie

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    Yup i sure did, Im now trying to figure out what is taking so much space, Utorrent did had something to do with it because as soon as i erased some dl files i got a lot of space back. Could anyone tell me how much space does OSX 10.5 takes?
     
    AntuanShagur, Jan 1, 2009
    #5
  6. ValkyrieLenneth

    ValkyrieLenneth Notebook Evangelist

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    Around 10GB - depends on what you choose when installing OS X.
     
    ValkyrieLenneth, Jan 2, 2009
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  7. lanwarrior

    lanwarrior Notebook Evangelist

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    That's interesting. If OP still have 170GB free HDD space, then the Startup disk must be far less. Any way to increase this?

    This is good to know, especially from someone coming from Windows environment, whereby there is no "Startup" partition like OSX (since it's based on UNIX)
     
    lanwarrior, Jan 3, 2009
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  8. aliquidj

    aliquidj Newbie

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    i also have utorrent and i am also having the same problem. im sure it has something to do with utorrent. the files that are being downloaded (even if being stored as complete) should not be enough to get me anywhere near my full HD capacity. i had read that you must leave at least 10 G for general function, but i have 126.46 out of 185.87 available, even with the torrent files im downloading. My HD info also displays the above, and yet i still get the error message.

    i have also tried deleting the caches (even manually), to see if there were any extremely large files caused by utorrent, but it has not solved the problem.

    i have a program that will allow me to see all hidden files on my computer, it is called cocktail. However, i am unsure where to look or what files are causing the problems. does anyone have any advice?
     
    aliquidj, Mar 2, 2009
    #8